فقر حمل و نقل و بهزیستی ذهنی
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Data
3- Empirical strategy
4- Results
5- Conclusion
References
Abstract
Using 12 waves of longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we examine the relationship between transport poverty and subjective wellbeing. To measure transport poverty, we use indicators that reflect transport affordability and accessibility. Our preferred two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimates, which instrument for transport poverty using NYSE Arca Oil Stock Prices and OPEC oil supply (in millions of barrels), suggest that a standard deviation increase in transport poverty is associated with a decline in subjective wellbeing between 0.318 and 0.544 standard deviations. This general finding is robust to alternative ways of measuring transport poverty, alternative estimation approaches, alternative approaches to addressing endogeneity of transport poverty, and holds irrespective of whether subjective wellbeing is measured using the single-item overall life satisfaction scale or composite scales such as the Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5) scale or the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10).
Introduction
Subjective wellbeing refers to judgments by an individual of his or her satisfaction with their life, feelings of happiness and sadness, as well as other negative and positive emotions (Diener, 1984; Kahneman et al., 1999). Subjective wellbeing has been linked to a broad range of positive outcomes, most notably good physical health, rewarding personal relationships, strong work engagement and longevity among others (see, Diener et al., 2017; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005). Improving subjective wellbeing has become an important policy objective in many countries with some suggesting that the ultimate goal of government should be to improve the wellbeing, happiness and quality of life of its citizens, rather than focus on more conventional economic indicators, such as economic growth (Diener, 2000, 2006; Kahn and Juster, 2002). In Australia, the country in which we situate our study, one survey shows that 77% of Australians believe that the prime objective of government should be to maximize people’s happiness, rather than maximize the country’s wealth (Hamilton and Rush, 2006). Transport poverty encompasses various deprivations relating to transport access and affordability (Mattioli et al., 2017). The term has been used synonymously with other transport-related concepts, such as car economic stress, transport disadvantage, transportrelated social exclusion, transport accessibility and transport affordability among others (see, Currie et al., 2009; Hine and Mitchell, 2017; Lucas et al., 2016, 2018; Preston and Rajé, 2007; Xia et al., 2016).